About | Artist Statement | James English Photography

James English: South Florida Photographer and Artist

It was in 1996 during my first of many trips to Cuba that I was born again into photography. The street became my muse…my vision from the early 1970's of street photography as narrative became my passion again.

I explore and see our world with a curious eye… whether doing client work...or on the streets in Cuba, South Florida...or around the next corner. I try to photograph the familiar in new and different ways…not to confuse anyone who is looking at my work… but to see, feel and show slices of our day to day world we would normally overlook or not see at all. Usually we do not need explanations or expect answers with the images we look at because we perceive them with what we think we know. I am not seeking or giving answers…but choosing to keep the mystery within these images and letting the viewer ask questions and wonder with a curiosity of their own. These photographs are either single images or part of short and long term projects. Some of these are a series of sketches from my everyday life... expressing my feelings, ideas, thoughts, and memories…any could be real or fictional. They can be from the past, now, in the moment or yet to be experienced. Some are streams of thoughts or dreams remembered, broken, revealed and to be. Through these narrative and non-narrative sequence of photographs I am thinking out loud... visually... I hope to show and share part of my reality as I feel it… as I see it and live it. A Portuguese poet named Fernando Pessoa explains it best: "What we see is not made up of what we are seeing, but rather from what we are"